Missing Trilogy Book 2: A Broken Tale
by Bigsisnat533
Summary: SOULS. It's always about the SOULS, no matter how dim they may be. He never intended on falling into this other world, only to be hunted as a key for the monsters to escape, being as though they were down several SOULS. He wasn't even sure what that meant. But at least now he knew why the girl had rebelled... - Third time restarting this... Third time's the charm, right...?
Fifteen people stared into the abyss in horror. Six of those people were the family members of the two teens who had fallen in. Nine of them were only onlookers who'd caught glimpses of the event. But there was one who was not among them. One who was neither saddened nor overjoyed by it.

Sure, he had wanted to get that girl to his boss so badly, and to get rid of the witnesses. But he had also realized that it would have been nigh impossible to get her to come willingly and even harder to bring her in by force.

He rubbed his aching head-that girl could punch-and watched the two families and their acquaintances leave the new bridge in a solemn procession. As soon as he was sure they were gone, he stood up (with some difficulty) and turned back towards the dam which loomed overhead.

He didn't necessarily want to tell his boss that the girl had died. He wanted even less to tell him how she died. The Thrushmaster's reactions were often unpredictable, especially to news like this.

So it was with great hesitation that Marekai started walking towards the dam, the bridge of metal and melted flesh feeling odd under his feet. And then, the bridge simply wasn't there anymore.

He looked up to see that, in his musings, he had simply wandered off of the bridge and was now free falling to the bottom of the gorge as well.

A slight feeling of peace settled over him as he fell. Time seemed to slow, the cold wind calmed the bruises left by the girl's assault, and all his worries about what to tell his boss simply melted away.

The bottom of the gorge seemed hesitant in its coming. Time nearly froze. Darkness started to swaddle him.

He hit the ground, yet at the same time, didn't feel it or realize it until he saw the bright yellow flowers he was sitting on. He stood up and looked around, cursing the seeds and pollen that now clung to his costume.

There was not much to see in the small, cave-like room he stood in now. Only a small shaft of light shone from a hole in the ceiling, presumably the one Marekai had fallen through, although he didn't remember falling through that particular hole. He coughed a few times-despite the hole which he could see sunlight pouring through, the air was quite stale.

Up ahead, in the darkness, he could see a small passageway leading to what looked like a doorway. Gingerly, he walked through said doorway, thanking his many years of hiding in the shadows for the decent night vision it had given him.

The next room-if such a place could be called that-was similar to the last. Another shaft of light shone down upon the ground and another doorway stood across from where he stood. As he walked towards it, Marekai could only think of what his boss would say when he got back from… wherever this place was.

Lost in his train of thought, he nearly stepped on a bright, yellow flower, pausing only when it spoke to him. Marekai stepped back, startled.

The flower smiled up at him-how could a flower smile?-something unplacable shining in his eyes.

"Howdy!" it introduced itself, under a guise of friendship-one Marekai spotted all too easily. "I'm… Wait…"

The flower's ruse seemed to slip as he noticed, for the first time, that Marekai was not who or what he expected.

"You're not a human, are you buddy?" the flower asked.

Marekai just raised an eyebrow at it (although he was almost certain that the flower couldn't see underneath his mask, which he must have donned at some point, although he couldn't recall when). "You are a flower…?"

"That's right!" the flower said, putting his cheery expression on again. "I'm Flowey! Flowey the Flower! Say… how'dya get all the way back here?"

Marekai studied the flower carefully before replying, "I don't know." He decided to leave out the part where he fell off a bridge through who knows where.

Flowey felt his friendly expression slipping again, finding it hard to mask his confusion. The newcomer certainly wasn't human, yet somehow seemed to come from the surface. He wouldn't have been able to enter the Ruins, and most certainly wasn't from the Ruins. Which left the Surface.

"Well," Flowey said, "I guess someone'll have to teach you how things work around here!"

Marekai didn't bother trying to decipher Flowey's words as a display filled his vision. It was thin, translucent, almost as if it were made of glass. Inside sat what appeared to be a heart. Although… it seemed very dim, as if it were barely there.

Flowey seemed to hesitate, as if he wasn't quite seeing what he was expecting. But he brushed it off and smiled again.

"See that heart? That's your SOUL-the very culmination of your being!"

Marekai stared back and forth between his SOUL and Flowey, regarding the latter with a suspicious expression which was well hid by his mask.

"Your SOUL starts off weak, but can grow strong if you gain lots of LV." He continued before Marekai could interrupt. "What does LV stand for? LOVE of course!"

Marekai couldn't help but wonder if Flowey was following some sort of a script, as he continued before Marekai could respond.

"You want some LOVE, don't you?" A few amorphous blobs formed above Flowey's head, slowly taking on the appearance of seeds. "Down here, LOVE is shared through little, white-" he hesitated "-Friendliness Pellets! Go on, grab as many as you can!"

Marekai wasn't entirely sure what to do, but by the fact that the pellets homed in on his SOUL and that he couldn't move the rest of his limbs (for reasons he wasn't sure if he wanted to know), he assumed Flowey meant for him to collect them with his SOUL (which he found he could will to move, though it took a bit of concentration)…

And yet, Marekai still didn't trust him. For one, he was a talking flower. Not only that, but Flowey's actions reminded him of ones he'd used before, when his usual tactics of mystique couldn't grab the attentions of the various boys he'd instructed over the years. So he avoided the pellets. Most of them. Thinking had reduced his concentration, and he found that he had a generally weak hold on his SOUL anyway. A pellet had grazed it, sending a sharp pain through his body.

Flowey, on the other hand, seemed generally pleased. Information at the back of his mind told Marekai that something called "HP" was low, nearly drained, which through general assumption told him that he was near dying (although he didn't exactly feel like he was).

"You IDIOT," Flowey sneered. "In this world, it's KILL or BE KILLED…"

Marekai cursed his luck as a ring of pellets surrounded his SOUL. He briefly thought about the fact that he no longer needed to tell his boss about the girl before a very confused looking monster in a purple dress stepped into the picture.


End file.
